ITAT Group, China case study

Background

ITAT Group, China's largest garment and general merchandize chain organization, is co-owned by Vanda Group Overseas Investment Co., Ltd., Morgan Stanley, Blue Ridge China, and Citadel Investment Group. ITAT had opened 607 international brand garment membership stores, 108 general merchandize membership clubs, and 7 FASHION ITAT (fashion stores) over mainland China's 30 provincial administrative regions and 317 cities by December 31, 2007.

The ITAT business model and its scale generate high demand for networking and information interaction capabilities. They needed a nation-wide VPN network to connect over 800 ITAT branches and outlets in order to ensure a reliable, safe, and easy-to-maintain network environment for the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system.

The Challenge

ITAT was looking for an end-to-end VPN solution that would solve the problems that had plagued its previous system, which included VPN latency and poor reliability. The old system was also difficult to manage. ITAT turned to WatchGuard for a solution that would make it easy to maintain the ERP system by providing a reliable and safe network platform.

ITAT had the following issues and requirements:

• Replacement of existing VPN setup. ITAT wanted secure and reliable connections to over 800 outlets and branch networks based on a hardware VPN gateway.
• Limited IT labor force. The product needed to provide automated VPN-building technology and feature-rich, integrated administration.
• Domestic ISP connections from south to north could be troublesome. The new system had to ensure the reliability and stability of VPN connections.
• The solution had to provide the flexibility to allow for a phased implementation of the project. As the network grows, the VPN solution needed to be able to be easily updated and provide the necessary scalability to accommodate expansion.

The Watchguard® Solution

ITAT needed to implement an end-to-end VPN solution that would solve the problems that had plagued its previous system, including VPN latency and poor reliability. The old system was also difficult to manage. For meet their requirements, ITAT chose WatchGuard Firebox® X Peak™ appliances for its headquarters, while deploying Firebox X Edge appliances as secure VPN endpoints at their outlets and branch offices.

Solution Details

Benefits

With a WatchGuard security solution, ITAT realized the following benefits:

• Fast and convenient VPN deployment
  The unique drag-and-drop VPN technology of the WatchGuard security appliances enables quick construction of VPN tunnels and immensely accelerates the networking efficiency.
• Intuitive, effective real-time monitoring and integrated administration
  WatchGuard System Manager (WSM), the console that is used to managed all security capabilities for the network, displays the real-time running status of all VPN nodes, allowing IT staff at headquarters to monitor and administer the entire VPN network effectively and directly.
• Reduce cost investment and provide a truly scalable VPN network
  The unique license-key upgrades that are available for WatchGuard appliances make it easy for ITAT outlets to upgrade their systems for higher capacity and better performance without costly hardware replacements for a lower total cost of ownership.
• Private network-like reliability and stability
  With VPN gateway redundancy technology, the branch VPN device will automatically switch to backup VPN node when the central VPN node has a problem, which greatly improves the reliability and stability of the entire VPN network.
• Reduce cost of mobile VPN client deployment
  The IPSec VPN client provides seamless back-up connectivity with simplified importing of encrypted configuration files. No additional configuration is required.

The director of the ITAT information department noted that, "WatchGuard provided a fast and convenient VPN configuration solution that accelerated our time to market. Time-saving also enables us to realize a profit over competitors."

« Return to top »